


The Color of the Sky

by Anonymous



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 01, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Divergence, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Stiles Stilinski Accepts The Bite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 19:35:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12660018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Season One Rewrite. You don't see color until you meet your soulmate. Stiles starts seeing in color after a run-in with the alpha.





	The Color of the Sky

The first time Stiles sees Peter is not the first time Peter comes into his life. The first time Peter comes into his life is when he sinks his teeth into Scott’s side and permanently changes everyone’s lives. The first time he sees Peter, he permanently changes Stiles’ life, even if neither of them realize it right away.

It is night the first time they come face to face, a solid door between them. Peter is full of rage and half out of his mind when Stiles slams the locker room door and shouts that he is not afraid. The beat of Stiles’ heart screams differently as Peter throws his considerable bulk against the obstacle, desperate to snarl back you should be, you should be- I am.

And Peter is afraid, desperately so, to see the amber glow of Stiles’ eyes glint in the moonlight as he ducks away from the window and leaves Peter alone within. He doesn’t know that Stiles only saw the pitch black of his fur, not the red of his eyes, and it scares him that the one person on this entire wretched planet that may have been put here for him wants him dead, too.

When he hears the sirens, Peter considers just letting them find him. He considers killing every last one of them, until his rage subsides and the wolf within sleeps once more. But the panicked beat of Stiles’ heart still echoes in his memory, a too-hard twist to a knife Peter can’t remove, so he only claws out of his prison and disappears into the black beyond the flashing lights without so much as a whisper.

\-------

 

Blue.

Blue is the first color Stiles notices, if not the first he sees. It is the hue of the sky, the shade of the high school’s pool, the color of a windbreaker jacket across the courtyard at school. It is unnerving and beautiful and Stiles finds himself seeking it out among the blacks and whites and grey tones that have always surrounded him.

Stiles’ father has told him a thousand times that the first color most people see is the color of their soulmate’s eyes, but Stiles has not met anyone with eyes that particular color. He checks. He grabs Scott’s face the next morning and it is a mixed bag of relief and disappointment to find only the same charcoal grey staring back at him like any other day.

“You met someone?” Scott asks, and Stiles shakes his head.

“Must have,” Stiles tells him. “No idea who.”

“That’s rough,” Scott says, like that is not the most obvious thing in the world. Stiles tells himself he isn’t jealous that Scott and Allison can see in full color since meeting. He’s pretty good at lying to himself. “We’ll definitely figure it out.”

They don’t. When they tell Allison, she drags them to the library and they find a yearbook from the year before. They go through every single page, and by the end there is a list of twenty people. Stiles crosses off the ones he’s known for longer than a day, and that leaves them with eleven people he’s sure he’s never met.

“Maybe you just passed in the hallway,” Scott suggests. “Maybe they’re wondering the same thing as you.”

“Have you tried asking on the Color-Mate app?” Allison asks, pulling out her phone. She brings up an app Stiles had always been sure he would never have to use, the one that comes with practically every phone. It is supposed to allow people to make postings for missed connections with their soul mate.

“I don’t know the time,” Stiles says, but he pulls out his phone too. It’s on there somewhere, and he finds the app buried in a dusty, forgotten folder where he had shoved it upon purchase. He enters his information anyway, while Scott and Allison look over his shoulders, and nothing comes up as a match with the ranges he’s used.

“Maybe the other person just hasn’t used it yet,” Scott says, patting Stiles’ shoulder in comfort. Stiles sighs.

Later that night, his father isn’t any more help, at least not with finding his soul mate. He does pull out a poster from somewhere in the basement, one with a huge map of colors that all have little sets of numbers in them. Hex codes, he tells his dad, and they spend two hours putting little black dots in all the boxes of color Stiles can see. Most of them are blue. He doesn’t notice that black and grey and white are actual colors, actually have codes like all the rest.  
He doesn’t know the first color he ever saw reads #000000.

“Your mom’s eyes were brown,” his father says, pointing to a square of dark grey, almost black. There’s no way his dad can see the color anymore; that ability left when his mom did. “Darker than yours.”

Stiles reminds himself that there are some things worse than not knowing who your soulmate is. He covers his dad’s hand with one of his own. “I miss her, too.” It’s not the same. He knows that.

Maybe it’s better this way, not knowing who has just discovered the color of his eyes.

Maybe it’s better if he never knows.

\-------

 

Derek drives them to a hospital after an argument, after he tells them about the hunters of Beacon Hills, the ones that want Stiles’ best friend dead. He parks his sleek black car and leads them down dim hallways Stiles thinks they’re not supposed to be in this late, and lets them into a small room tucked away at the rear end of the building.

Inside sits a man in a wheelchair, and Derek tells them it is his uncle. He tells them a hunter burned his house to the ground with his family inside of it, and Stiles never knew the fire was arson, but knowing what he knows now, it makes sense. Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but he gets it, anyway.

He recoils when Derek turns the chair around, but not because of the burns on Peter’s face, or the ones twisting down his neck to disappear below his sweater. Stiles knows some part of him should register the damage, and ask why Peter is not healing, but all Stiles can see is the exact shade of Peter’s eyes in the dim lighting. He knows that color. He’s been seeing that color everywhere- but he’s never seen Peter before.

At least, that is what he tells himself, despite that Peter’s eyes are not the only color in the room. Stiles doesn’t know what name applies to the warm color of Peter’s hair, but he can see that too.

It has to be a coincidence. It has to be.

A little voice inside of Stiles tells him it isn’t, but he’s as good at ignoring that voice as he is at lying to himself. He hasn’t met this man. He hasn’t.

But then, Peter isn’t a man, not really, and the thought doesn’t occur to Stiles until he’s much too far away to see the twitch of Peter’s fingers as he fights to have control without becoming the wolf howling inside.

\------

 

The next time Stiles sees Peter, he is upright. Still scarred, still broken, but standing at the edge of the hallway, staring back at him as Derek’s warning still rings in Stiles’ ears, the phone forgotten in his hand. Peter is in full color by then, from the tawny color of his hair to the blue of his eyes to the red lacing all of his burns.

“You must be Stiles,” Peter says, even as Stiles takes a step back. He doesn’t mean to, but he does, because the universe has played a lot of jokes on him over the years, but this one must surely be the cruelest.

But the nurse from earlier appears before Stiles can say anything, and Stiles realizes they have been working together, that she has been helping Peter’s savage quest for revenge. “I’m going to die,” he manages to say when he can form an entire string of words at once.

Before Peter can explain the way his eyes go dead at the words, Derek is there, and the nurse is on the floor, and Peter isn’t paying attention to Stiles anymore. Derek tells him to leave and Stiles doesn’t have time to explain that there’s far more going on here than Derek thinks before Derek’s claws are drawn.

Stiles is on the floor when Peter snarls: “You think I killed Laura on purpose? One of my own family?” and Stiles hears the ache in the words even if Derek doesn’t. He barely has time to get out from beneath them before they are at each others’ throats, and Stiles doesn’t have time to wonder how much blood a person can lose before they’re dead as he passes the unconscious nurse.

Stiles is halfway to the door when he hears Peter’s softer words. “My mind, my personality, were literally burned out of me. I was being driven by pure instinct.”

Derek snarls back: “You want forgiveness?”

“I want understanding!”

The next moment Derek lands on his ass right in front of Stiles. He spits out crimson blood, stark against the white tile, and Stiles can feel the thunder of his own heart beneath his skin. It’s a wonder either wolf can hear the other for how loud his heartbeat must be to them.

“Do you have any idea what it was like for me during those years?” Peter continues, prowling forward to Derek again. “Slowly healing, cell by cell. Even more slowly coming back to consciousness.” Alone. Stiles can hear the word, even if Peter never speaks it. Derek’s been gone a long time. “Yes, becoming an alpha, taking that from Laura, pushed me over a plateau in the healing process. I can’t help that.”

Derek wobbles to his feet and attacks again, until Peter grabs his hand and forces him to his knees. Stiles knows there is nothing he can do, and the fight is closing in on him again. He needs out, before it catches him. He has to find Scott. All of this is too much to handle by himself.

“I tried to tell you,” Peter says. It’s not gentle. It’s not kind. “I tried to warn you.”

Stiles scampers out the door to the sound of shattering glass, and doesn’t look back.

\------

 

Peter could kill Derek for getting in the way, just when he finally had the presence of mind to speak to Stiles for the first time alone, but Derek is family, and Peter will not kill his own family. Not when he is in control, not when he has a choice. Derek was too young when the fire happened; too young to process it well, too young to disobey his new alpha, too young to leave Laura and come back here alone to rescue his comatose uncle.

So Peter deflects his blows, meets his attacks, and forces the young beta into submission as quickly as he can. Derek will heal. He will heal and if Peter can just explain the situation to him, Derek will help him now. They will be a family again, the tiny scraps remaining of a once proud pack, and they will take their revenge upon the one who forced them into this.

His claws sink into Derek’s neck, and although Peter has control, he doesn’t have enough control to give Derek only some of what he wants Derek to see. There are memories of the fire, burning and bright, and memories of the void and the agony and the wildness that followed it. Memories of waking up to find himself covered in Laura’s blood, of retching at the thought of what he’d done, of wishing he could tear the power from under his skin if it would bring Laura back.

What was done was done, however, and Peter had fled from it. From what Kate Argent had done to him, from the way he’d been so hollowed out inside that the monster had gotten out without supervision. Laura’s blood would never have been on his hands if not for Kate, and Peter holds onto that knowledge as the memories flow and shift. He holds onto that anger, that pain, as he tells Derek without words what he has gone through.

He cannot stop what follows, though. He cannot stop the bourbon-warm brown of Stiles’ eyes from seeping into the share. He cannot stop the pale of Stiles’ skin or the red of his smile or the beautiful dark brown of every mole that marks him.

Derek sags when Peter releases him, and Peter has never seen that look in anyone’s eyes, not that particular mix of pity and loss and acceptance. “Stiles…” Derek says, somewhere between a suggestion and an apology.

“Kate first,” Peter says stonily. He needs this. He needs to wipe his slate clean if he ever intends to approach Stiles.

Derek just nods, and Peter feels the power of a willing pack.

\------

 

Stiles practically throws himself into the locker room in search of Scott, and finds him seated on one of the benches. “Dude, we have a huge problem,” Stiles says, out of breath from his hunt and all the stale adrenaline not fading from his system.

Peter is the alpha. Peter is his soul mate.

“Trust me, I know,” Scott says, and Stiles gets the impression that he actually does. Scott turns to face him, looking torn between sympathy and anger. “I know that he… and you… I saw everything that happened. All the way back to the fire, because apparently werewolves can share memories by stabbing people in the neck,” he continues bitterly, one hand straying to where his spine meets his skull. If there were wounds, they’re gone now.

“He came here,” Stiles breathes out, just glad Scott obviously survived the encounter. If Peter came here instead of Derek, then that meant…

“Yeah, and Derek was with him,” Scott tells him, getting to his feet. “Like, on his side. He said the alpha killed his sister on accident. How do you tear someone in half on accident?”

Stiles remembers Peter’s words: I was acting on pure instinct.

“Maybe it was,” he says, before he can stop himself. Scott stares at him as if he’s lost his mind, and Stiles roughs a noise at the back of his throat. “You’ve lost time when you’re a wolf,” he points out. “And you’re not… you know. You’ve got me.” You’ve got me, Stiles thinks in a circle, and there wasn’t anyone for Peter. “Maybe that makes a difference.”

“Or maybe he’s a murdering psychopath werewolf!” Scott says, and Stiles doesn’t argue. Maybe he is.

But maybe he isn’t.

\------

 

Something inside of Peter whispers that this girl does not deserve what he is about to do to her. Something says that she is innocent, and that he should lead her safely back to the school dance from which she has gone missing.  
But something louder howls that she has come here smelling of the affection of his soul mate, and that is the part of him that sinks long teeth into her side even as Stiles appears and yells for her to run.  
Peter crouches to hands and knees above her as Stiles reaches them, mantling over his prey. The terrified patter of Stiles’ heart nearly drowns out his words.

“Don’t kill her. Please.”

The words feel like a punch to the gut, but he does not say so, he just hums his acquiescence. “Of course not,” he says softly. There are things Peter wants to take from Stiles, but this girl is not one of them. He won’t cause that kind of pain to this one, but he does need something. His family is in danger again. “Just tell me how to find Derek.”

“What?” Stiles says, genuinely surprised.

“Tell me how to find Derek Hale.” Stiles does not know where Derek is, Peter knows that much, but he knows how to find him. If he doesn’t, he’ll think of it. The universe would not have matched Peter with anyone less.

“I don’t know that, how would I know that?” Stiles asks, pulling back fractionally when Peter looks up sharply at the denial. Peter does not appreciate being lied to.

“Because you’re the clever one, aren’t you?” Peter asks. “And because deception has a particularly acrid scent, Stiles.” Of all scents, Peter is most familiar with this one, tied so closely to his own scent that they have become inseparable. It is a comfort to know Stiles already smells like him, but it is not what he needs right now. He doesn’t have time for this. “Tell me the truth… or I will rip her apart.”

He is lucky Stiles cannot hear his heartbeat.

“Look… look, I don’t know, okay? I swear to god I have no idea-“

“Tell me!” Peter snarls, unable to quell the wolf howling and clawing at his insides, desperate to find its lost pack mate, to save Derek from the hunters that took the rest of his family away from him, one way or another. Peter needs help, and right now he needs it from Stiles.

“Okay,” Stiles says, like he understands, and Peter finds relief in the simple word. “Okay. Okay.”

\-----

 

Some part of Stiles knows he shouldn’t help Peter for any reason, tells him that Peter has murdered people and ruined his best friend’s life, maybe ruined some of his own life, too. Some part of him knows that if he helps Peter, if he finds Derek for him, that Peter will kill more people. Maybe Lydia. Maybe him.

But Stiles doesn’t need a voice to see the desperation in the blue of Peter’s eyes, and he recognizes the need to protect family. He may not be a werewolf, he may not need a pack, but he understands protecting those he holds dear. Peter didn’t kill Derek, even though he could have. Peter hasn’t killed Lydia, and hasn’t killed Stiles either, and Stiles feels brave enough to think he won’t.

So he tells Peter how to find Derek with the GPS in Scott’s phone, and he watches Peter wipe vermillion blood from his lips with a cloth so white it practically glows in the darkness. But Stiles stays put when Peter goes to leave and makes it clear Stiles is going with him.

“No, I’m not just letting you leave her here.” Not Lydia, not like this. Peter wants to save his family, but Stiles wants to save his, too. Whether she likes it or not, Lydia’s been bitten and she’s part of it now, part of their pack, and Stiles will protect what’s his.

It is a testament to something Stiles does not have words for that Peter does not just kill him there. “You don’t have a choice, Stiles,” Peter says, and the way he says Stiles’ name feels like a command. “You’re coming with me.”

“Just kill me!” Stiles snaps, tight and fast. “Look, I don’t care anymore!”

Before he can even process his own willingness to die, Peter has closed the distance between them and placed one single claw beneath Stiles’ jaw. The pressure is not enough to break skin, but Stiles finds his hands on Peter’s wrist anyway. Peter draws him to his feet effortlessly, Stiles scrambling to obey the unspoken order.

“Call your friend,” Peter says, like silk and honey as he releases Stiles. “Tell Jackson where she is. That’s all you get.”

Stiles stares for a moment longer, heart in his throat, but in the end, he obeys again.

\------

 

When Stiles parks next to the sleek little car Peter directs him to, Stiles nearly bolts. Peter has hold of him before he gets far, dragging him around to the trunk of another car. Inside is a laptop and a body. Derek did not hit the nurse hard enough to kill her, which means Peter did it himself, and Stiles thinks he should feel bad, except that she had helped Peter to kill people. She had been ready to help Peter kill him, and Stiles doesn’t feel that sorry for her, not really.

He wonders what that says about him.

He’s not sure it matters.

They argue, then, about getting the GPS to work. Stiles doesn’t know Scott’s username, or his password, but he knows what he thinks they are, and that is apparently enough to give him away to Peter. Stiles gets slammed into the laptop keyboard for his trouble, and he thinks maybe that tactic runs in the family.

He shivers when Peter bends close to him to murmur: “I can be very persuasive, Stiles. Don’t make me persuade you.”

So he enters his best guess, and asks what will happen when they find Derek. He doesn’t think Peter will kill Derek, but Peter will kill someone, and Stiles is afraid it will be anyone Peter doesn’t need anymore, even though Peter says he will only kill the ones responsible.

“Promise to leave Scott out of it,” he says, and something in Peter’s eyes softens in sympathy.

Peter takes a deep breath before answering. “Do you know why wolves hunt in packs? It’s because their favored prey are too large to be brought down by one wolf alone. I need Derek and Scott. I need both of them.”

Stiles gets it, he understand why Peter wants the help, but Stiles knows Scott. He’s known him since they were little kids in the goddamn sandbox together, and to his very core, he knows Scott won’t help Peter, not after Peter threatened Allison. He says so, but Peter doesn’t believe him.

When the location loads on the computer, Peter recognizes it, and Stiles can’t tell if Peter is relieved or just sick. Stiles remembers how Derek spoke about the fire, remembers the way Scott described being trapped inside of it, even though he hadn’t been. Stiles can only imagine how much worse Peter has it.

Then Peter raises his head, listening to something Stiles can’t hear, and he makes a dash for the car door. He puts the computer quickly in the backseat, and then turns back to Stiles. “Give me your keys.”

Stiles sighs, because he doesn’t want Peter driving his baby into the middle of a fight between werewolves and hunters, but he hands them over anyway. “Careful, she grinds in second,” he begins.

But when Peter takes his keys, he doesn’t head for the Jeep’s driver’s seat. He closes his fist upon them, bending them beyond use, and hands them back. Stiles takes them, heart pounding at the blatant display of strength, but also because he gets the message.

Do not follow him.

Do not get involved.

Do not get hurt.

“So you’re not going to kill me?” he asks, voice trembling, entire body trembling at the sudden rush of adrenaline when Peter rounds on him and prowls much too close, right into his personal space. “Oh, god…”

But Peter’s words are not a threat. They are soft, almost pleading. “Don’t you understand yet?” he asks, looking right into Stiles’ eyes, the blue of his own eyes so stark even in the dim light of the parking garage. “I’m not the bad guy here.”

“You turn into a giant monster with red eyes and fangs,” Stiles says, and realizes what he’s said only after he can’t take it back.

“And you’re my soul mate,” Peter says back without blinking, and Stiles had suspected it, guessed it, knew it already, but it still makes him breathless to hear the words drip from Peter’s lips. “What does that say about you?”

Stiles doesn’t respond, because he has asked himself the same question, and he is certain they both already know the answer. When the silence has gone on long enough, Peter finally relents.

“I like you, Stiles,” he admits gently, and it is maybe the first gentle thing Stiles has seen him do. “Since you’ve helped me, I’m going to offer you something in return. Do you want the bite?”

The words are so soft that Stiles doesn’t immediately parse their meaning. “What?”

Peter smiles patiently, even though his words have an edge. “Do. You. Want. The. Bite?” he asks, more slowly. “If it doesn’t kill you, and it could, you’ll become like us.”

“Like you,” Stiles says, when Peter doesn’t. He isn’t sure he isn’t already like Peter, at least a little. Becoming a werewolf might cross lines Stiles isn’t sure he can uncross.

“Yes,” Peter agrees, moving closer still. “That first night in the woods, I took Scott because I needed a new pack. It could easily have been you.” He pauses, searching Stiles’ eyes. “It should have been you.”

When Stiles does not move or speak, Peter reaches forward slowly, as if approaching a small, scared animal, and slips his fingers around Stiles’ wrist. For an instant Stiles thinks about pulling away, but he doesn’t. He just lets Peter tug his wrist up, until it is so very, very close to Peter’s face, exposed. Vulnerable.

“Yes, or no?” Peter asks, low and heavy, holding Stiles’ wrist and gaze.

Surely Peter can feel the pounding of his heart under the thin skin of his wrist. Stiles can barely feel anything else- just his own heart racing and the warmth of Peter’s fingers and the chest-tight sensation of standing on a precipice from which he knows he should not jump. Peter’s lips are practically against his veins. Half an inch lies between Stiles and the kind of power most people would kill for. The kind of power that has killed people.  
The kind of power that would help Stiles protect everyone he cares about.

“Okay,” he breathes out, not sure how the words got past his closed throat. “Yes.”

Peter smiles, and even as a human he looks like a wolf.

\-----

 

After Peter has left, Stiles wraps his wrist in bandages from the first aid kit he has started keeping, and sits in the driver’s seat of his Jeep watching as red seeps through the white, so bold and bright and colorful. It hurts but he ignores it. Werewolf. He supposes that he will have to get used to a certain amount of pain.

When he has stopped shaking, he gets out of the car and leaves for the hospital. His father is livid, Jackson is terrified, and Lydia is dying of a bite that Stiles now knows won’t turn her. His own bite, newer than hers, is already healing; he can feel his flesh stitching back together beneath the itch of the bandage.

As soon as they squirm away from Chris and his pack of hunters, Stiles takes Jackson’s keys and Jackson’s car and Jackson himself, and they leave to join the fray. Stiles isn’t sure, exactly, what he plans to do about any of it, but Scott’s not at the hospital and Allison’s not at the hospital and Chris has a party of hunters and Kate has Derek captive, and Peter’s out there somewhere ready to make sure someone dies tonight, and Stiles has to try something. Anything.

It goes wrong. It all goes very wrong.

Too many people are hurt by the time Stiles and Jackson turn up. There is blood on Peter’s claws and Kate is dead on the ground and Derek is going to be next when Jackson throws the first Molotov cocktail at the center of Peter’s chest. The night lights up orange and red and yellow, blue around the edges as Peter shrieks and twists and burns the way he’d avoided that terrible night so long ago.

Stiles feels it when Peter dies. He feels the loss of the alpha that bit him, and the kick to the gut when the flames turn black and grey. It steals the breath from his chest when Derek’s claws take away what Stiles had not yet had time to realize he wants.

He stays behind, after the others have left, when it is only Derek standing alone in the dark over the body of his last family member. “I’m sorry,” he says to Stiles, but Stiles knows he’s not. He can’t be. Peter lost the fight against the wolf’s rage, and the hunters might have killed them all if the pack had not taken care of him themselves.  
It doesn’t make up for the missing colors. It doesn’t make up for anything.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, and he doesn’t mean it either.

He stays long enough to help Derek bury the body beneath the floorboards of the house Peter almost died in years ago.

\-----

 

Stiles runs his first full moon without Peter, kept company by the beat of his own heart and the warmth of the moon on his skin. Scott runs at his side, and Derek keeps them within the bounds of the preserve until dawn breaks and Stiles has control again. They tell him it will get easier. Stiles doesn’t tell them it’s already easy.

He doesn’t tell them it is easier not to fight the wolf, to just let it have him. He doesn’t tell them it is easier to lose himself in the wild rush of power, to just forget that he is human and learn that he is a wolf.

He doesn’t tell them that he’s not that much different as a wolf than he is as a human.

And he definitely does not tell them that when he looks up to the sky on a clear day, he can still see the exact shade of Peter’s eyes. They think that Peter is dead, and Stiles refuses to correct them just in case they decide to go back to make sure.

If he had told them, if he had suggested that Peter might still be alive in some way, then perhaps Stiles would have run his second full moon without Peter, too.

But he doesn’t.


End file.
